These past few weeks have been relatively stable, after what seemed like months of ups and downs. However, once again, I’ve stepped onto the roller-coaster. There is a family thing that is going on that I don’t want to talk about right now, because we are waiting to hear more information, and I feel like it will just make me spiral if I start to talk about it. Better to just table that one and trust that we are a good family that takes care of each other, despite our interpersonal difficulties and harrowing challenges with emotional illness with my mother. She is a good person and we all love each other. It is an enormous gift to have a loving family. That will become a thing to write about when there’s more to know and understand. BACK BURNER.
The thing that is making me crazy at this moment is what has been making me crazy off and on since maybe February: Junji. Honestly, the entire nearly past 3 years has had bouts of crazy around him because I simply can’t split the morally-questionable/outright-wrongness of our relationship from my love-feelings/lust-and-desire-for-him/all-of-the-things-he-represents-for-me. What he represents, in a nutshell, being: Freedom, Music, an Easy Life, Simplicity, Calm in a Storm, Doing What Just Feels Right Without Thinking, Being Loved and Loving Beyond What is Logical, Letting Go, etc. As for the questionable aspects… what it comes down to is that being with him is doing something that is the only thing I can truly point to in my life that I have EVER DONE which I feel has gone against my core moral principles in some visceral way. And then of course, the torture comes in with the back and forth you can do in your mind–justifying yourself, then berating yourself. Explaining why you did what you did, then feeling like there is no explanation. Making exceptions, making qualifications, getting down to it and thinking the world is just a big ball of social constructs and what really is right and wrong anyway? I can play that game until the cows come home. AND I HAVE.
THIS is the very REASON that I have come to a place of deciding that one part–one important part–of this trip to Japan I have coming up here in 2 more sleeps, is going to be a GOODBYE to the romantic love and lust we have shared these almost 3 years. It is time. Right or wrong, anything that tortures me that much surely can’t be good for me. It is “unskillful living” as the dharma would say, to keep choosing something that is bringing pain into the world. My pain is the only pain I know about for sure, but I can make some educated guesses as to who elses’ pain is also coming into the world through our actions. It is enough to know we need to end it. And I know, if I were living in Japan, I might not be ready to do that yet. But I don’t plan to be back there for awhile (and with this family stuff, it could be a longer while than I planned) and for the first time since Junji and I began, I can see the pathway out of it. I can see a time when I will be able to be near him without wanting him, lusting for him, swooning over him, and needing his love and validation. With all of the work I am doing and plan to continue doing, between meditation, studying the dharma, and going to therapy, I truly can see a pathway, and more importantly, I can UNDERSTAND that I need to take that pathway if I want a more peaceful, happy, heart.
But what is it that has been making me crazy? None of that. Well. It’s not the central part. What is making me crazy is JUNJI himself! First off, a lot of instances of poor communication, in which I wait in agony for days for a response to something really pressing on me and stressing me out. Other times, just sending him a sweet message, and again, waiting, for DAYS for a response. Usually getting one word or just a STICKER or nothing! Feeling, repeatedly, like I’m giving a lot in winding up for this last hurrah, and getting very little back. There’s distance, a few weird things he has said, and most recently, today, this.
About a month ago, a bar owner friend realized I was coming to japan on golden week and immediately asked if me and Junji could come do a show while I was in town. I was overjoyed-delighted, but knew it might not be possible–golden week is family time and Junji has one. So I ran it by him and he actually agreed! I was super stoked and thanked him a lot and asked how long the set should be. Lots of waiting and slow communication later, he said it would be maybe 40 minutes of music for us, and then some sets from other friends. Which is much more than I hoped for–we won’t be able to practice at all and it’s been 2 years since I left! So I again asked him “are you SURE?” and said things like, “it’s ok if that’s too much for you,” etc. But he assured me. At which point I was over-the-moon excited and started practicing our set, and he said he’d do the same. About a month later, today, after 3 days of typical silence in which I am doing my best to hold out and wait for him to contact me first, I finally break down and message “everything ok, jun?” and he says only this: “I couldn’t practice.” And nothing more. I try asking questions but have no response, as he is at work now. I don’t know if that means he isn’t going to play the show. I don’t know if that means he might just do a song or two with me. I don’t know if that means he won’t even be coming to the show at all. And the anxiety spiral begins.
Now, at this point, I could go into all the anger and frustration, or the ways that I justify things for him, or the way that I try to remember that he and I are VERY different–he is SO in the moment, and not much of a planner, for one. I could go into how his love languages are definitely quality time and acts of service, where my primary is words of affirmation, so it’s always been a little hard to balance that out. And near IMPOSSIBLE to figure out how to balance that when his 2 love languages DO NOT translate to text messages. I could go into the way I think he is pushing away and it is completely justified and probably for the best, as we both know that this week is the end of things for us. I could do a whole novel on how crazy I think I am for giving two shits about this when I KNOW I NEED TO LET IT THE FUCK GO.
But ALL of this, ALL. OF. THIS. paints a much larger picture of what my specific challenges are as a human being. GOD DAMN IT. I know that I shouldn’t–couldn’t–WOULDN’T be putting up with all of the incredible deficits in this relationship if the situation were a little different. If we were just a normal couple. If I didn’t feel like I had given up something HUGE by choosing to be involved with him, and so now I need it to be seen through to the end. If we spoke the SAME FUCKING LANGUAGE. And I don’t mean love languages. If we were from the same culture! But DESIRE. Wow. It is a force to be reckoned with! The desire to be loved. Affirmed. Important. Accepted. The desire for things to get wrapped up in my own little nice package with a bow, the way I want them, with pretty, clean, closure. They desire to be in control. The desire to have men give me EVERYTHING. ALL of the attention, adulation, praise, love and lust, to be the object of THEIR desire. TO BE THE FUCKING MOST SPECIAL GIRL. I don’t really fucking know what that is about. I have a few clues, but really?! Not unpacked yet. And that Junji isn’t giving me that when he was before, and now he’s not, makes him SO DESIRABLE!!!!
These things are starting to be addressed in my therapy, and I am feeling like I really need to sort that shit out. My arrogance and desire to be the center of the fucking universe is really disturbing when I get a full realization of it, and one element of what is disturbing about it is IT IS JUST LIKE MY CRAZY MOTHER. AND her crazy mother, for that matter. Man. I DO NOT want to continue that cycle. They were and are so full of unhappiness and stress, unsatisfactory-ness and suffering. There’s got to be a better way to live.
I have felt for YEARS that I could really benefit from therapy, and I’m so glad to have it in my life now. We have begun to get to the things I just mentioned in our sessions, and I’m hopeful that Jennifer can help me begin to unpack those things and better understand why I do them. And understanding is the first step to a better life. Thank you Care Partners for your awesome health insurance. Fuck you, the system, for making it so hard for people (especially those with far more severe deficits than I) to get access to affordable mental health support. stepping off the soap box now
I have learned that ranting and writing in some form really unravels my anxiety and stress and I really should do it more often. Feeling much more sane than when I started this post. Forgive me my human flaws.
I am nervous–as I always am–when telling people about this side of me, to post this in an online forum where random people can read and judge me. But there is something really gratifying and cathartic and frankly very different about airing dirty laundry online than simply writing in a paper journal (which I also do, much more frequently than here, but still not enough). I’ll risk it. Please be kind.
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